The New York Times has a story today on pork barrel spending which highlights the large sums appropriated for soft earmarks. Clearly we have a problem with pet projects getting the green light through committee reports, winks and nods. True, many projects may be worthy of funding. However, until we remove special interest campaign contributions from the equation and enact public financing it will be a way to reward donors not voters. Publicly funded elections, as set forth in the Durbin-Specter Fair Elections Now Act (S. 1285), are the best way to achieve sensible spending priorities in the Congress.
Friday's Washington Post featured a letter to the editor from Sean Parnell, President of the Center for Competitive Politics. It misses the point, although I agree that "better scientific, enonomic, and policy arguments" should be the focus of debate.
Rep. Don Young (R-AK) takes the cake. Actually, he'd be more likely to insert into the Department of Health and Human Services appropriations bill a provision mandating that $20 million worth of cake is sent to citizens. In Sweden.
And, he'd be proud of it.
"I was always proud of my earmarks. I believe in earmarks, always have, as long as they are exposed. But don't you ever call that a scandal," he said.
A $320 million bridge to Nowhere, Alaska? A $10 million earmark for a bridge in Florida? And we're not supposed to question any of it?
Maybe Rep. Young should take a bridge to 2007, where his buddies Jack Abramoff and Mark Zachares are serving jail time on corruption charges. Maybe then he'll understand that by saying he's "proud" to funnel millions to useless and unwanted projects at his donors' behest, he's only inviting trouble for himself and his party.
From USA Today:
Congress steered $5.6 billion to private companies in 2005 -- more than state and local governments combined -- through its power to add special-interest items to spending bills, a new government database shows.
The database, completed by the White House Office of Management and Budget this month, identifies nearly 15,000 earmarks totaling almost $19 billion.
About $37 million of that money went to companies tied to the bribery scandal of former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA), who is now serving eight years in prison. Another earmark is the $18 million defense contract Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) inserted for defense contractor PerfectWave, whose owner, Brent Wilkes, has pleaded innocent to federal charges of bribing Cunningham.
Can I repeat that amount? $5.6 BILLION! That's such an immense amount of money, it's no wonder a large chunk of it was misappropriated - either accidentally or on purpose - or misrepresented or outright stolen.
I came across this little tidbit on the Washington Post website today:
One legislator's "pork," of course, is another's vital public works project. But all are earmarks, those tax and spending directions added to money bills at the behest of anonymous lawmakers -- anonymous, that is, until the legislation is passed and they can boast of it to constituents.
A coalition of odd bedfellows is trying to bring more transparency to earmarking by encouraging citizens to get involved in tracking who is trying to get what money for which special interest. And all of this will be online and available to the public.
Well, that certainly sounds like a good idea. This coalition aims to create a single database of earmarks, which the public can then access and investigate on their own. Any findings will be reported back to the database, hopefully creating a one-stop-shop for seeing where our tax money is going and on which Member of Congress' initiative.
"We feel the public should get involved in appropriations when it matters -- before the legislation is passed," she said. Teachout noted that some money mandates "are wonderful earmarks," but said, "It's our money," and secrecy invites bad governing.
Well put. We'll keep you updated on anything more we learn about this project.
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